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The result was the creation of a trust of sorts: the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). From 1909 to 1915, the MPPC brought order to the industry with a licensing code and drew many of the embattled motion picture companies under a single umbrella. The organization increased profits for all, although it came under fire from independent companies for its monopolistic behavior. Edison received a large share of the profits, although he was eventually driven out of the market by falling prices and increased competition. His share of the business was finally sold to the Lincoln and Parker Film Company in 1918.

Analysis

Edison's involvement in the movie business marked a new phase in his life. No longer a pioneer in inventions, he more and more depended on his celebrity and the achievements of others to remain in the running for new industries and popular technologies. Needless to say, this did not endear Edison to his workers at the West Orange facility, since he often used their labor to enhance his own name and profits.

Edison also proved himself to be surprisingly conservative when it came to inventing a new technology, the projection camera. He refused to consider the prospect for a number of reasons, not the least of which a projection camera would substantially eat into the profits of his Kinetoscopes. If film viewing were a communal experience, Edison calculated, then fewer film projection machines would need to be sold because more people could watch the same film at the same time. It was his stubborn refusal to develop a projection camera that drove Dickson to leave the Edison laboratory and develop his own.

Edison's involvement with the MPPC also marked a sharp turn for the inventor's business philosophy. It was unlike Edison to attempt such broad-based market sharing with so many competitors, even though Edison garnered a large share of the MPPC's profits, thanks to the patents he had either filed for himself or bought from other inventors. In the past his strategy had been to aggressively fight competitors out of the market.

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